A Caretaker's Notes

Catherine thinks this is a sad story especially because we're living it, so feel free to pass on it. For me it feels like trying to write about anything else, at this time, would be akin to attempting to give a lecture in front of a burning building. When cancer is happening to someone you love, you escape the physical insult of it, but it will unmask you, for such times are seen as a test of character. And so this is the story of who we were on our way to arriving at this point and what parts of us turned out to be relevant to the crisis.

A Caretaker's Notes 

As Catherine lay sleeping beside me, at the end of the second day of chemo, I sat up in bed watching her and noted her paleness. She was uncannily white as if her blood had turned transparent. I thought of the drugs that had been poured into her body and were now having their way with her cells, both the good ones that kept her alive and the bad cancerous ones.

Then I stopped my mind for fear that those physical side effects, we now knew about, would jump into my body, into my psyche like dreams sometimes do. I had experienced that once, in my youth, with a lover whose nightmare had appeared in my head and I woke up waving my hand across space to push the vision away, to dispel the harmful intruder she was dreaming.

I turned away from Catherine's sleeping form, satisfied that she could sleep so soundly. Then I lay down facing away from her and asked my spirit family to wrap me in a protective shield. Thus I drew a line between my experience and Catherine's and felt safe.

When I first heard that the biopsy, of the very small lump in her breast, had come back positive, I was immediately filled with dread at what had befallen us, at the pathos and potential drama of it. But because this was such a right of passage for so many women now and it had been caught so early, we soon regained our equilibrium and embraced the prospect of surgery and a quick recovery.

But then a few days later, the pathology report revealed that the cancer was a little more unique and more aggressive. That it had a higher chance of recurrence and of appearing elsewhere in the body. Dread was now replaced by shock. I suspended my emotions waiting for more information while Catherine planned for an untimely demise.

The surgeon who had given this news was a large woman with blond hair falling freely to her waist. She reminded me of a Viking. And she waded into this with a passion befitting a warrior, tracking down an oncologist at a conference she was attending, because she knew he was doing clinical trials at Stanford for just the drug that was designed to do battle with the triple negative cancer Catherine had. The oncologist could not say no to the Viking and soon we were in his office discussing protocol with him and his nurse practitioner. A course of 6 rounds of chemotherapy was prescribed. This would raise her chances of survival to 76% from 56% (which was what it was if she only had surgery). Significant numbers.

"I'm going to do it," Catherine said that evening at the kitchen table.

"Good for you," I said, though I feared this treatment so much, I considered it worse than death and would have been entertaining a hundred other options.

"I guess I have to roll with the punches," said Catherine.

 "And I'll roll with you," I said taking her hand, "even if I have to row you across the river Styx," I added, tears welling up in my eyes and hers too. We smiled wanly at each other. It was as close to a pact of commitment as we had have given each other in 17 years of being together.

 The Breast Cancer Study Group 

The irony of Catherine's diagnosis was not lost on us. We had both been deeply involved with the lives of a handful of rather famous women, afflicted with breast cancer, who were part of a study at Stanford in the '90s. A study that would prove that support groups extended the lives of women with metastatic breast cancer (or at least improved their quality of life). They had appeared on a Bill Moyers' special and been interviewed numerous times.

At the time, Catherine had her own business as a videographer and her main gig was to record this study group. For, in order to prove something about support groups, there has to be documentation of every nuance, every emotion expressed by these women. She followed them for five years, witnessed their deepest issues around their illness, their mortality, their complaints about doctors' bedside manners, whether their husbands were supportive, how their friends reacted, how they faced death. For Catherine, doing this work was meaningful in the wake of the AIDS crisis, for she had lost many friends to the disease. And her best friend from high school was right then in the process of dying of AIDS.

The job gave Catherine a seriousness and an acquaintance with death that was unusual for an American. It was part of what attracted me to her. A mutual friend at my office introduced us. I was in the process of being tossed to the wayside from a five year relationship with a woman who was leaving me for another and I was soon to be homeless. This story made me a tragic figure, in my own right, from which Catherine wanted to rescue me.

About the time I moved in with her, she had to give up the unprofitable videography business and get a full time job in order to keep her house. Which meant she had to find someone else to take over the job of recording the women. And so she trained me. I needed work to tide me over while I started my business as an organizer. It was my turn, now, to follow the women until the study ended two and a half years later.

I sat behind a two way mirror to record them with two cameras operated by remote control. I would focus one camera on the woman who was talking and the other on one that might respond, then switch between the two. The cameras could pan around three quarters of the room, move in for a tight head and shoulder shot or back out to take in the whole room. It wasn't Hollywood, but it was sophisticated enough to warrant some skill. Apart from what Catherine taught me, I also took a class at Foothill College in television production.

Later when one of the women was too sick to leave home, the group wanted to meet at her bedside, and I was asked to come along and bring a camera on a tripod. Being in the same room as the women called for a new set of skills. While I was proud to be able to move with the ease of a dancer, I had to be unobtrusive in such a way as to call no attention to myself. I learned to disappear. All my concentration focused on listening so that I could anticipate who would speak next and capture that response too. The job trained me to give everything that was said equal value without judgement. At the same time the peer response of the women to each other would inform how I would later talk to my clients about their overwhelming lives.

Both Catherine and I felt honored to be witnesses of the group. Every week, the women gave us little bits of truth about what mattered; that it wasn't about what you had accomplished; it was about knowing yourself. This was enough to sustain me on my quiet path of self-knowledge for outside those walls the high tech boom screamed loudly of money and riches. The women buffered me from that siren song of super wealth (or rather feeling inadequate that I wasn't going to achieve such wealth).

 The Unmentionable 

I soon realized that my attitudes about death were also different from those around me. I was just not caught up in the tragedy of dying. And I couldn't figure out why. Why were therapists coming into the observation room and lamenting at how sad it was that these women were dying? After all they were strangers to them, not family members. Weren't they informed that the women had metastatic cancer before they took on the job? But it wasn't just those who worked there. Everyone in this country seemed horrified by the idea of death and avoided mentioning it.

I began to look at my own heritage. Tried to explain it to a staff member at lunch.

"It's just that, in Thailand, we don't take so much responsibility for dying," I attempted to explain.

"You mean because life isn't valued there?" she said. I was so stunned by this stereotype that I turned to one of the therapists for help, but it was not forthcoming. I was stumped. I didn't have enough words to explain that death was accepted so readily, not because we didn't value life, but because we were constantly reminded of how suddenly death could come. It was in the language, in the acceptance of the unexpected, in the long, multi-layered, funeral proceedings.

Later I would laugh when I read, in a comparison of cultural attitudes, that Americans thought death was optional. So that was it. It was tragic because they had failed to keep it from happening.

At a dinner party once, the topic of meteors came up. Catherine thought that the thing to do was to use missiles to shoot down the meteor so as to prevent it killing us. This, I thought, seemed a rather extreme use of resources for such an unlikely occurrence.

"What's wrong with death by meteor," I said thereby ending the conversation. I thought I was being serious, but the others were amused by what appeared to be my absurdist sense of humor.

That I was not impressed by death became an asset once Catherine received her diagnosis. When others showed fear at the news, she felt obliged to reassure them, tell them it was going to be okay. She didn't have to do that with me. She could talk to me about the things that scared her, get my opinion on things.

"You can be my friend," she said relieved. I went to her doctor's appointment with her so I could offer her my take on what was being said, look up her drugs on Wickipedia and otherwise calm her.

Chemo Journey 

On the first day of chemo, Catherine sat in her recliner at the infusion clinic, got very emotional and apologized for wrecking my life.

"No you haven't," I protested, "you've made it that much more interesting." She was used to taking care of everyone—me, her brothers, her father. It became clear to me, now, how much effort she put into it. She had to get used to having others take care of her. But she didn't have to entertain me. A writer is always looking for new material.

And the people-watching hadn't been this interesting since I was a child walking the streets of Bangkok; the lives of the disfigured beggars we saw along the way, teaching me how fortunate I was. Across from Catherine's recliner sat a young woman who was smiling at us from under her hat, her hair probably thinning. Her young life introduced so early to this trauma gave me pause. And she was so upbeat about it too. A young man accompanied her; they were watching something on her Powerbook. In the next chair over sat a man, who was already bald, watching the small TV that came with every chair. He had the off color pallor of one undergoing chemo. One of his legs was amputated and I watched the stump moving back and forth as the afternoon wore on. He was quite young too.

How prevalent this disease had become. There was a whole building devoted to cancer patients now. And one just for women with cancer. Things had come a long way since our work with the study group. I felt that many of the women's complaints had been heard. Cancer had a whole new feel to it now. It was catered to, more in the manner of a resort hotel. They even had valet parking. The main building was filled with natural light, and a harpist moved from room to room trundling her harp on a dolly, then stopping to play for 15 minutes. Waiting times had been reduced considerably too. The infusion time itself took several hours, but where else could one sit with people who had nothing to do but rest. Though cancer had sliced through our life, blowing everything off our day planners, it had also made it something of a vacation.

"All we have to do is endure," I told Catherine. Nobody would expect anything more than that.

I was at my best when life stopped like this for I had no head for planning the future as Catherine did, making our lives work financially in the style to which we had become accustomed (which incidentally included terrific health care and disability payments for just this kind of illness). It was my strength to cope with the task at hand.

I took out a book on origami that I had saved decades ago for just such an occasion though I would not have foreseen such circumstances. A few weeks prior, a client had unloaded a thick book of origami papers which I had not yet given away, so I was all set. Folding paper animals turned out to be the perfect activity for hanging out in the infusion lab. It was non-threatening, sort of fun to watch, fun to do and addictive. (It was not until I learned to fold the traditional paper crane weeks later that I learned of the healing tradition of origami in Japan and was touched to read that children folded paper cranes when a classmate was seriously ill.) The infusion lab became my origami summer camp.

(Had this happened last year when we were going to England I would have been crushed to have had to cancel the trip. But it didn't. We had an incredible trip to England and I felt doubly grateful for that timing and those memories.)

In the second week of chemo, Catherine had a rough time of it. A low grade nausea dogged her increasingly each day and the drugs given her to manage it weren't working. I worried that she would lose strength altogether from not eating, but nothing appealed to her. I had to stop nagging her about it. I feared that I would suddenly flip from hero savior to sadist—Betty Davis in "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane".

I had lingering regrets from my father's illness. He had been a difficult patient when he was ill and sometimes got himself sent back to the emergency room when he did not do as he was told. His wife put me up to the task of telling him what she needed him to do and I had handled it bluntly. The more frustrated I became, the more blunt I was, to the point of being unkind. My father was angry at me for ganging up on him. In the end he forgave me, but I was left wondering why I didn't think it through before following those requests. Things might have gone differently.

"I don't have any solutions," I told Catherine feeling at a loss, "I wasn't trained for this". She was going through hell and I felt bad about not being able to help with either her physical discomfort or her emotional pain. I had already suggested she call the Stanford team, but a nurse who didn't know her case answered and had not helped. I asked her if she had called her therapist; he had assured her he was available by phone. (She did and he was helpful).

I hid out in the garage organizing it, while she struggled to find her way through this. Her brother Stephen, who still lived with us, came out of his room and sat with her to find out what was going on. He had been nearly the sole caretaker of their mother so I knew he had managed somehow and I could count on him as back-up. Maybe he had some ideas.

 A Tent 

I distracted myself by looking at pictures of tents. I was looking at tents when we were waiting for the biopsy results. Tents made me feel good. They reminded me of camping and the coziness of having everything I could possibly need right at hand. Lying in a tent was a memorably stress free experience and so made me happy. I shopped for tents and lulled myself to sleep going over their many features. I could have a tent for emergencies, one for traveling to jobs, one for showering in and for my composting toilet. What I boiled it down to was one I could just sit in outside in the garden; a safe space outside of time.

I ordered one from a family business in Utah that made extremely sturdy tents from sage green canvas in the manner of those I knew as a child. It was their smallest one, a cabana, tall enough to walk into and just big enough to put a chair and a tiny table inside. It had no windows for it was designed to be used with a shower. When I pitched it, it was so splendid it made me happy just to see it from the kitchen window. With its square base it looked a little like an Aztec pyramid and had an air of mystery about it, all closed up like one; it seemed to contain the secrets of the universe should I wish to access them.

 

Catherine pulled herself together for the second round of chemo and demanded from her team a better experience. They were concerned when they heard how it had gone and stepped up treatment to include hydration everyday and more anti-nausea drugs. This would help a lot. The doctor also confirmed that the tumor was measurably smaller; the treatment was working. It didn't sink in at first, but that evening a tiny bit of joy energized me and I realized how much I had forbidden myself to hope. 

The journey is still long with three months of chemo to go, but it is the right journey and eventually we will emerge from it.

The Making of a Closet Stylist

It was not until mid-morning on my first day working with the closet designer to the stars that I actually understood that there was a niche for closet stylists and that I, in fact, could fulfill that niche. 

When I put my shingle out as a professional organizer, 17 years ago,  there were basically two markets, residential and business. Business organizers offered their clients systems that would increase efficiency and productivity, while residential organizers had clients who were, either, situationally overwhelmed or chronically overwhelmed. (There were enough chronically overwhelmed clients to create not only a niche, but a field unto itself spawning research into brain styles and a chart to categorize levels of clutter.)

Situationally overwhelmed clients included deaths in the family (stuff to be cleared out), marriages (two of everything), births (lots of new stuff), old age (downsizing of stuff), and moves (getting stuff from here to there). These niches were claimed by estate organizers, senior move managers and regular move coordinators. A sub category of moves included homes being remodeled (stuff moved out and back in again, but needing to be stored and accounted for in the interim). It is here that the niche of closet design fits in. But unlike those closet companies with glossy ads in freebie newspapers, who offer five designs and shoehorn your pick into your existing space in a day or two, Linda London LTD is a full service, high-end, company who will create architectural drawings, design spaces for every item you own, engage cabinet makers, stock up on your favorite sundries and then arrange everything in the new space in such a way that your aesthetic socks will be knocked off every time you open a drawer, a cupboard door or closet.

Being handy with power tools, I have offered my clients such custom closet installation services myself (minus the sundries shopping), but the comparison hardly bears mentioning. My clients have tiny closets in 1930's houses. Linda has reinvented the term closet. As one colleague described it, her closets have closets. Many of her clients' closets are the size of studio apartments. 

Team Organizers

Those organizers who take on the responsibility of big jobs have my complete admiration. They also tend to be single with mortgages to pay. They fully admit to stress related health issues and are in danger of having no life. They also hire their fellow organizers. Thus it was that my colleague Kim asked me to join Linda London's crew on a job not far from my own house. 

Kim, like me, specialized in chronic disorganization which essentially means we work with people most would call difficult, but we find to be interesting. She was referred, by a trusted masseuse and an old friend of Kim's, to a Big House client for a move job. This Big House client led to another where she met Linda who was doing the closet remodel. Linda's West Coast clients regularly flew her in from New York to follow the progress of the remodel. 

She had a broad New York accent, a wonderful laugh and a tendency towards appreciative hyperbole that made working with her feel like a party. She also looked so much like Fran Lebowitz, the witty New York essayist, that I felt compelled to ask her, at lunch my first day, if people mentioned the resemblance. 

"Only when I was younger," she said, nevertheless pleased at the reference. 

Our job was to follow her around as she delegated tasks to each of us. The tasks were so simple I thought they were being delegated to the maid. "Turn these hangers over," she directed. And that's what we did for every single item of clothing that had been moved in on their old hangers. Custom hangers were part of Linda's package. 

My colleague Priya, a calm and reassuring veteran organizer of big houses, helped me with the hangers in the Mrs' closet. I had not had a chance to get to know Priya, but by the end of the hangers I knew how she came to the US, what languages she spoke and her opinion of the film Slumdog Millionaire, particularly its depiction of India, her homeland. Her area of expertise was the kitchen and she was to win over the family's chef with her suggestions and organization. 

We carefully spaced the hangers just so, being sure to keep the clothes in the exact same order as requested. Linda did ask the maid to arrange the ties in the Mister's closet, but she wasn't happy with the result and asked me to do it. I already knew what she was after and so I rearranged the ties in a pleasing chromatic order making sure the tips were hanging even. Four racks of ties—blue, red, green and miscellaneous. She was so pleased she gave me a hug. 

"I did not go to art school for nothing," I said happy to please her so soon. Linda herself was completely self taught, guided by her passion for all things having to do with cabinetry and making things beautiful in them. With each job she took on more challenging assignments often learning the hard way how materials worked together or didn't. After years of challenging herself in this way she appeared to have no equal. Her meticulousness and her products were top of the line. On her jobs I learned, not only the family tree of hangers, but the hierarchy of drawer liners. The humble shelf paper raised to a pinnacle of luxury I never knew existed.

My clients ask for Contact Paper in those kitchy patterns that date a kitchen long before they wear out, but no such thing ever graced a Linda London job. The clear plastic liners with ridges favored by most organizers were allowed in the pool house or guest house and some kitchen cupboards. These I could cut for her (less a sixteenth of an inch for ease of fit), but shelves frequently used by the staff were lined with thick sheets of plexiglass, while those that would be touched by the owners themselves were glass half of an inch thick it looked like, their polished green edges a visible element of the design. Both plexi and glass were custom cut by a specialist and installed by him on the site, preferably before the shelves were filled and the client had moved in. Linda had also lined shelves with Corian stone and stainless steel she told us.

It was, however, the drawer liners that took my breath away. I'd never seen a custom fit box liner before. The tolerances between the drawer and the liner boxes were so intense that getting them into the drawer against the air pressure was a feat in itself. Linda took the measurements of each drawer, herself, once the cabinetry had been built. She had also counted and taken the measurement of every item the client put in their drawers in order to make the liners with divisions so each item (or group of items) had its own cubby, each piece of silverware its own slot. A specialist in another state then crafted these liners, covered them with ultrasuade or felt of specified color. (Fewer choices offered now with the recession, but you can still get deep purple). For the spa Linda preferred plexiglass liners, an even more unforgiving material. On this job one of the larger ultrasuade drawer liners didn't fit; a measurement mistake by the liner maker. This happened Linda said and told me the workmen took the mistakes home and used them as pet beds. I took this one home and made it into a bookcase.

The Big House Perspective

When Linda came to know me better for my eco salvaging ways, I amused her by telling her I lined my drawers with cereal boxes, specifically Raisin Bran because they were so cheerful in an op art sort of way. This passed muster because at least it had a look. Priya and Kim had both wondered how I, as an environmentalist, would react to these Big House lifestyles—the excessive carbon footprint of it.

"Ah well, I check my values at the door," I said, but I did admit to being sent over the edge by the floor to ceiling cupboard devoted to the storage of incandescent light bulbs. But then the next day I discovered that the house electrical supply was supported by a field of solar panels and that there was a green dumpster on site for all the cardboard boxes we unpacked. There was also a kitchen garden complete with deer proof fence, architecturally designed to match the house. I was happy to admire these considerable efforts. That I would otherwise judge struck me as hypocritical. 

The Big House lifestyle was already a part of my own history, bringing up all the complications of extended family and house staff, private schools, great expectations, money and responsibility. If I reached back far enough I had my own Big House reference. It was the house of my great grandfather in Bangkok. I visited it throughout my childhood, but it was so big I was never able to form a complete floor plan in my head and in memory it is a series of disjointed rooms, a parlor, a huge rambling kitchen, adjoining staff quarters, a series of linked gardens full of hanging baskets of orchids and a terrifically large front lawn that later filled up with small houses built for grown children. 

The grand front entrance of marble steps was the most prominent feature of the house; the first floor also paved in white marble paired with dark wood paneling. Stiff chairs of dark wood inlaid with mother of pearl graced the rooms. The second floor had a bedroom for each of the wives (nine accounted for on the family tree). 

On the third floor was the shrine to the ancestors. The ashes of the ancestors kept in little drawers inside a very large Chinese armoire. The inside of the thick heavy doors carved with scenes depicting the activities of travelers as they proceeded down a road back and fourth across the door. I was so impressed with this armoire, when I was shown it at the age of fifteen, that my uncle asked me if I would like to take it home, just the door that is. This would not be the only time that I would be offered such exaggerated gifts and I came to see it as an affectionate test. The first part of the test I had passed by identifying the most expensive item in the room. The second part of the test I usually failed by looking horrified. There was too much attached to owning such an item. By refusing to take on such things I retained my freedom to be unencumbered not only by the lifestyle of such possessions, but by the family obligations that came with owning them. As a teen I embraced the song "I Got Plenty of Nothing" as an anthem (as sung by Barbra Streisand—irony of ironies).

One move organizer told me that handling envy was one of the problems of finding organizers to work on their teams for Big House jobs. This startled me. Sure, everyone wants a little more wealth, but wealth on this scale had its own burdens. On a practical scale these houses were cumbersome to manage and required a full time staff. This took up way too much time, especially for the wives. Plus there was all that walking just to get from here to there. I was happy to enjoy the museum grade art and furnishings and still be able to walk away at the end of the day. 

"The scale of these houses does something to people's minds," Kim said. This  prompted me to wonder what skill set one needed to work a Big House job. Perhaps it was like standing on the floor of Yosemite Valley. You first feel insignificant. Then you try to remember who you are. Many feel a need to prove themselves and give their full attention, ready with an opinion, but that can be exactly the wrong thing to do when what's required is to take up as little mental space as possible while doing simple things extremely well. Otherwise you risk becoming clutter yourself. Some wanted to prove themselves by working fast, but haste makes the house staff nervous because it increases the potential for damage and breakage. Unpacking and putting away the Bacarat glasses (priced at $350 a piece) is best done as a zen exercise. What was needed, I concluded, was a Big House perspective to find one's place in the scheme of things. What I needed, it soon became clear, was a new wardrobe.

Sartorial Answers

For jobs requiring opening boxes and cutting sheet material I liked to wear painter's pants because the pocket down the leg is perfect for a utility knife. But on these jobs there were often so many workers on the site that each trade had it's own uniform. Painters wore painter's pants, carpenters wore carpenter's pants, movers wore polo shirts with their company logo on them, gardeners wore white t-shirts, blue jeans and sometimes high visibility vests to avoid being run over by incoming traffic. Designers often wore black and anyone who went into the house had to wear booties over their shoes or change into white Crocs (those orthopedic, big hole foam clogs originally made for spas). Priya and I carried ours from house to house in blue nylon bags we happened to have on hand. In a Crocs house it was the job of the house manager to find you a pair.

In order to loose the painter's pants I had to find work pants that would actually cover my ass. The trend in women's pants had waistlines so low, they appeared to be designed to show off your thong underwear. And men's pants had dropped their smallest sizes with the advent of the hyper baggie look. So I turned to boy's sizes in school uniform pants. Dickies had them with a pocket down the pant leg just where I liked it. The wrinkle resistance and stain resistance didn't hurt either, plus the high polyester content slides well on floors. In black, charcoal and silver grey they would do nicely. The Dickies logo gave me a brand name that imbued me with a sense of pride and irony at being a member of the working class working with my hands, a category that had left my relatives horrified.

But what to do about shirts? The navy blue of my Thai farmer's shirts worked for awhile with all the pockets, then seemed too ethnic. Button down oxford shirts were fine, but in the world of designers they just seemed too square. The rest of my closet was filled with oversized men's shirts I had bought at Goodwill in the colors and designs that men found too effeminate, so had thrown them out early before they were much worn. I had been experimenting with different ways to resew them to fit. Shirt hacking I called it. I got bolder with the process and decided to get rid of the buttons. Buttoning up shirts took too long. I took off the too big collar and cuffs. I borrowed techniques from renaissance costuming and added ruffled cuffs. I was pleased with the results—a pirate shirt in corporate pinstripes! All in durable, easily pressed, recognizable fabrics. For five dollars and five hours a piece I could make a new shirt every week.

I was spurred on when Kim told me she had a job for me working with a client who had his own stylist—an assistant who picked out his clothes, shopped for them and laid them out so things would go together. She was said to be the confident of the client so very high up in the ranks. I was intimidated, but as I sewed I imagined becoming this stylist's most valuable player on the job, and looked forward to spending a great deal of time with men's shirts. I still felt that my true calling was to work with clients one-on-one, motivating and training them out of overwhelm, but I was grateful to have this work. The few times a year that such jobs came my way they were good money. (Everyone at these houses was so well paid that a culture of graciousness and uber politeness pervades.)

The room size closet this stylist and I would work in had a cove ceiling painted in an art deco style with bold geometric stripes in metallic colors; hidden lighting around the perimeter illuminated the design. When Kim brought me into the room, the stylist was telling the contractor where she wanted the belt racks. Like all the young women at this house, she wore skin tight fashion jeans, but with a V neck sweater that gave her a collegiate look. We waited until she was done, then Kim introduced me. She shook my hand warmly, then looked intently into my face and said she knew me from somewhere. I searched her face, but did not recognize it. 

"I have no idea where from," I said for I was far from home, having come all the way to Los Angeles for the job. I wondered what it was about me that looked familiar. Was it my stylin' pill box hat (made in Nepal of fair trade hemp)? This was an outcome I hadn't expected, but any resemblance to a known person appeared to be a good thing in these parts. Meanwhile Kim was extolling my virtues as the most precise organizer of men's clothing. Who knew? I was in, I had a niche. I would go home a little richer despite myself.

Destiny of Souls

It is through contemplation of the great mysteries that a culture reveals itself. In this workshop on Death and Beyond I was looking forward to getting to the bottom of the culture of Shamanism. As it turned out Shamanism is something of a do-it-yourself practice, so it would be just as much my inner culture that would be revealed over the weekend as the underlying perspective of the Shamanic cosmology.

The two day workshop was held on the UC Santa Barbara campus within sight of the ocean. I had driven down for it, booking a tent on a deck at a woman's house for the weekend. (I'd found her on Airbnb, the network site for such enterprising budget accommodations).

The class was small and almost entirely female. The one male participant noted that he was used to it being also one of the few, if not the only man, in his yoga class, calligraphy class and tea ceremony class. He carried his drum in a bag made specifically for drums. Another attendee showed me what she got with the Shaman Kit she ordered online. Along with the drum and sizable rawhide rattle, there was a mask that had been designed from black sheet plastic and foam, specifically to block the light while allowing the eyes to open in darkness. "I can see colors," she said. I usually just put my bucky travel pillow over my eyes, but this time I laid my billed cap over my face while resting my head on the pillow.

The teacher, also named Amanda, had grey hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her hands were graced with silver rings bearing large stones. A striped pink scarf livened up her brown polar fleece vest and white buttoned up shirt. She walked to the center of the room and lit the candle on the floor followed by gestures of such intention I was already transfixed. She wasted no time in getting us on our way.

The purpose of this exploration of death was twofold, she told us. First to prepare for our own death by learning the cosmological geography so we wold know where we want to go when the time comes. The second being to help others be where they would like to be following their deaths. Given these travels, death was not really a concept in the Shamanic sense. It was more a matter of soul migration. We knew about soul loss, the pieces of soul that leave a person usually during a traumatic experience. (Such soul loss can be restored through shamanic means.) Death was a soul loss of 100%.

The Shamanic practice divides the spirit world into upper and lower worlds. Reality occupies the middle world. Spirits of the dead may go to either upper or lower worlds or stick around. Or be reincarnated, Amanda told us.

My After Death Hometown

Our first journey was to find out what happened to us immediately following our own death. Where did we go? We were to journey and find out. She beat the drum for us and I could see myself simply bursting through the veil, walking onto a road of packed gravel in the open countryside, but I was wrestling with scenario, wanting to choose a death. I opted to linger a bit and look at myself lying in a bed below, but the bed held no particular credibility and I soon let it go.

On the gravel road, I was greeted by my black cat Gato for I had made such a journey before to bring his soul to the witches after he died. (That was nearly twenty years ago when I studied another discipline of spiritual magic via the divine feminine.) Gato led me through a simple iron gateway and then left me to embark on my journey alone. After much physical travel to get me in the mood, I arrived at the central square of a town full of whitewashed buildings. It was empty until a man came out a door. He was a Mexican. I asked him where I might go. He pointed to the church in the center of the square and a door in the side of the building.

I entered the church to find myself on stage before an auditorium of friends dressed in white. It occurred to me that public speaking is often considered more frightening than death, but this was not at all frightening, more like a homecoming. I was there to tell my death story. I was not to hear it right then; I was just taking the tour. Then I was outside again with a young girl beside me.

"What do people do here?" I asked her. She told me you can either review your life and put it in a box or learn new skills. I saw myself filling plastic boxes with life's crap, putting a lid on it and watching it go down an assembly line.

"What kind of skills," I asked.
"Archery, golf," she said.
"Golf!?"
"Well not really golf, but truth seeking skills with targets," she explained. I thought of all those inner tennis books developing the mind to visualize conscious intention. There were other classes too involving balancing skills to understand the body and a skydiving class to learn to work with other souls while doing sky dancing routines.

"Is it always sunny here?" I asked my tour guide.

"Well if you want to work with the weather you can go to the weather lab. That's where we help mitigate climate change," she said and took me so I could see for myself the giant greenhouse full of people, some in lab coats. They were also growing crops which would help to improve the agriculture practice on earth.

"Can you watch living people?" I asked and she took me to the observatory which looked like an airport inside. Through the big windows I saw cityscapes below.

What about intellectual pursuits?" I asked next and we entered a grand library furnished with upholstered armchairs and heavy tables. People were reading quietly. There was another building too where you could look up what happened to dead people you had known. The information was available in books that were holographic in a Harry Potter sort of way. I asked where my deceased relatives were. My Thai grandparents had already been reborn, but I saw my English grandmother dusting the interiors of one of the city buildings, my grandfather, nearby, polishing the orb at the top of the banister.

"What do people do for entertainment," I asked. "Do they go to the movies?:"
"Well sort of," she said, "There is a movie theatre, but we go to watch people's life story." I peaked into the theatre and saw a packed house with a single narrator on stage against a backdrop of moving pictures.

Back in the town center I noticed a wishing well where you could shout down, into the blackness, your requests for your next life. Getting to the next life involved parachuting out into the sky. The parachute would break away and the air turn liquid and eventually you would find yourself in the birth canal.

This visionary journey was surprisingly easy and pleasant. Our next journey would be more challenging for it involved seeking and "seeing" the hereafter for the larger public.

Destiny of Souls: The Upper World

Before embarking we were introduced to the concept of levels and were told to pay attention to the details of getting from one level to the next as we went in search of the destiny of souls. The expectation to provide a geography for the public at large inhibited me at first, but after I heard responses from the other participants I got more permission. By the third journey I saw enough to form a workable landscape. The levels laid themselves out for me in an orderly fashion.

I ascended to the upper world by my usual way of climbing up a tree. I found myself at the first level; it was a busy chaotic space, much like a train station platform, full of souls seeking their destination. The air was heavy with regret and blame, expectations of punishment, and purposeful confusion.

In the center of the platform was a spiral staircase leading to level two. There was a hushed quiet there. I stood in a long hallway looking into numerous open doorways where I glimpsed wooden desks in orderly rows, every one of them occupied by someone writing in a notebook. This was the level where souls wrote down the lessons learned from their life. I found the staircase to the right and ascended to the third level.

The carpet on Level Three was red and there was a movie usher to greet me at the top of the stairs. I was given to understand that this level was the multiplex of religious narratives. Each theatre was telling the same story of ascent to oneness using the narrative embellishments of the particular religion.

"But what about atheists?" I asked the usher.

"Well they are just going to have to come out of the closet and make it up," he said and lifted his hand in the direction of the Theatre of Existential Narratives. I peaked my head in the door; there was nothing in it but white walls. A few people wandered about. Just beyond the back wall wafted fetid smells as though from piles of excrement. Satisfied I asked him how to get to the next level and he pointed me in the direction of the elevators.

On Level Four I found myself on a ledge overlooking what looked like a maze occupied with people. They were making mandalas. Wait, how did the Tibetans rate a whole floor, I was wondering, but it was not a religious practice per se. It was simply a place for participating in a purifying exercise. Once purified you were beamed up Star Trek style from the center circle.

This brought me to Level Five. Everything on it was white; a few souls dressed in white moved purposefully about. This was the plane of oneness; everyone here was involved in a pursuit of shared purpose. Beyond that I did not go, but was told that Level Six was for special projects, especially teachers who would return to earth to assist with human transformation.

When I recounted my vision to the class, everyone laughed at the idea of special projects. It was in the recounting that I also wondered why I would ask the question I did about atheists. But my life was so filled with non-believers of all sorts it seemed to require that I address the conundrum of an atheist soul finding themselves in the afterlife.

Destiny of Souls: The Lower World

Having visited the upper world, naturally it would follow that the lower world would also have to be explored. This I did with much more liberty than I had envisioned the upper world for I had a better sense of the possibilities of the lower world. We were not to call upon our power animals for this journey, but I did see them watching me as I emerged from the tunnel. I was in a forest of tall trees; each one contained an occupied tree house.

"Why are you here?" I asked those sitting in their tree houses.
"We are here to detox from prescription drugs," they told me in unison.
"How long will that take?"
"A while. But there is a purifying river that is helpful." I walked to the edge of the trees to have a look at the river. Then asked how to get to the next level.
"There's a rabbit hole over there." A rabbit helpfully ran towards it.
"Follow that rabbit; yes the white one." I scrambled after the rabbit and soon entered an underground cave that was lavishly decorated in the style of a traditional men's club. To the left was a cardboard cutout of Alice in Wonderland. To the right a maitre d' greeted me.

"This level is for those who are obsessed with food," he explained to me and proceeded to show me the sumptuous banquet room where diners experienced the most delicious meal, each course making them feel lighter and lighter until finally they were dining on air.

"We also have a very fine collection of wine," the maitre d' wanted me to know, showing me the wine cellar.
"And what do people do after dinner?" I asked.
"Well there's the smoking room," he said opening the door into a room where a man in a smoking jacket was smoking his last cigarette. And as the evening wore on I knew the air would became clearer and clearer. It was also in this room that people engaged in philosophical conversation answering the most confounding questions to utter satisfaction.

"Then you must have a bar," I said catching on and followed the maitre d' through a door to the bar. And here it was that each drink made the drinker ever more filled with clarity of mind.

"How about a chocolate room," I requested. Indeed there was a chocolate room and I succumbed to the most delicious chocolate truffle I'd ever eaten, but I was not yet ready to give up chocolate so I did not linger.

I would not see the third level until the following day for we had come to the end of our first workshop day, but I looked forward to it with increasing excitement. That evening I joined all the other out of town participants for dinner so that I might add to my social context the lives of my fellow journeyers. I had already met, at lunch, a yoga teacher and a psychologist doing her dissertation on shamanic healing. I also met an attorney seeking a means to handle her prophetic dreams and shamanic experiences of unseen energy. There was also a Reiki practitioner and a hospice nurse with a long history of shamanic work. At dinner I met a masseuse from Mexico who had just begun her shamanic studies in her search for healing techniques. Also a personal trainer who channeled the dead; she showed us pictures of her pug in entertaining outfits. The dog was clearly loving it.

I returned early the next day eager to embark. We drummed and danced to raise the energy level then proceeded with our exploration of the lower world. I again met my maitre d' who took me to an outer hallway. I knew that the next level down was filled with water and required stripping off all my clothes. He promised he would look after them as I handed them to him. Then I lay down on the water slide. Immediately I was whooshed down to a common pool filled with lively bodies all cavorting with each other. It rather reminded me of Bath Spa and was lovely and warm. This level was devoted not so much to carnal desire, but to the exploration of every curiosity of the human form. When I'd had my fill I walked up the steps where I was blown dry by hot airstreams. I was handed a lycra body suit which I donned. Then I pushed through the revolving glass doors and jumped down a large clear tube through which I could hear choral singing and see below me a sunny landscape of pastoral fields. This was Level Four, the level where all souls harmonized together. Even if, like me, you couldn't sing; you would be able to anyway.

Once I had touched down on the landscape I found my way towards the river where awaited boats. One would take me through a tunnel to the hall of fear. In this total darkness full of creepy sounds from menacing humans, I was able to physically defend myself confidently and calmly. As I progressed through the darkness the voices became friendlier. They jumped in front of me attempting to scare me, but then would succumb to outbursts of laughter. From the dark I emerged into an office building floor full of cubicles. I stayed in the atrium area, but I could see that in each cubicle was a patient and his or her psychiatrist. Those who had suffered psychosis in their life were resolving things with their shrink, now that they no longer suffered under the psychosis. Some were giving their shrink back some of their own medicine, making them lie on the couch and reveal their childhood neurosis. It seemed only fitting, but I had no shrink to meet and continued on down a ramp to a large set of double doors.

The double doors opened to Level Six where I was greeted by a giant in a white basketball uniform (with red piping). I too am to play and we are all on the same team. In fact there is only one team because this is the level for dispelling competition. The crowd cheered and every effort is perfectly executed. After the game I followed a darkened ramp to Level Seven which is a round chamber with tall walls of protruding rock lit from below. A crowd is assembled four or five bodies deep around a glass shaft filled with fluid. Inside is a soul awaited rebirth. Then whoosh the soul shoots up in a flash of light and all the faces are visible and shining with ecstasy.

I find myself wondering what is the source of energy that pushes the soul out. Then everyone jumps up together and we are so heavy that our downward force creates the proper propulsion much like a toy air rocket. But this is just a flourish of my narrative talents. I am prone to embellishment, not leaving well enough alone. The soul could ride out just on the power of our intentions alone. More likely it was a divine force and we are basking in the wonder of this mystery.

Our teacher and the class found my description of the levels of the lower world amusing enough to laugh at some of the details beginning with the tree houses. Once I had established the theme of detoxification I could run with it all the way to rebirth. But the answers were not mine alone. I set the theme for each of my levels, some more consciously than others, but the spirits filled in the rest.

After I had come back from the lower world I wondered at my Dante like recreation of the hereafter with all the different thematic levels, but despite his great influence on my imagination when I read his books 30 years ago, I hadn't even thought of him until then. Maybe Dante was tapping into the same visionary structure that Shamans had discovered preceding him, only his muse was putting a Catholic spin on things. I was quite glad, now, to have something else to reference.

Death and Beyond: The Work of the Shaman

There are those who tend to the dying. They realize they have have a talent for it and offer themselves to the task. I have friends who became Buddhist chaplains; they feel it is a privilege to do this work and it fills them with grace. And so too, there is a place for the Shaman in this work. People die better if helped. This is an established psychological fact so says Stan Graf. Our teacher had a few suggestions for attending a dying person in a culturally Shamanic way. We might offer to play a drumming CD, guide them to visualize a beautiful place, get them to relax, let go of issues that are here. Suggest they meet an animal or helping spirit. Ask if there is someone they would like to see (on the other side). We did not need to manage their experience, just suggest, she counseled.

I am not sure I have the skills to sit with the dying. I wasn't that great with it when my father was dying; I have a few regrets. The finality of death doesn't impress me. I am not much drawn to the tragic unfolding drama of it. This is, perhaps, what comes of being raised with reincarnation as a given. But unlike my fellow Thais, I do not fear ghosts. This fear of ghosts was so prevalent in the culture that raised me, that by the age of eight, I had taken a stand about it, probably out of a no-nonsense British sensibility. The way to deal with ghosts, I declared to myself, was to talk to them without fear, ask them what they wanted.

Thus the final exercise of our workshop was a fitting follow-up to this personal history. In this psychopomp work we were to visit the scene of an accident or suicide we had heard about and look for the soul in question, then offer to take them to a place where they could be happy (if they weren't already happy where they were). We were also to ask if they wanted to go up or down. I immediately had a candidate in mind. He was a well loved community figure who had, who knows why, decided to throw himself in the path of a train. We were asked by his family not to dwell on how he died. So I was struck by the gravity of initiating such an undertaking and rose to the task largely because I knew no one else would know to do it. I felt I had to offer him the opportunity just in case he needed it.

As instructed we were to call our power animals for help and merge with them. Then travel to the scene of the death. With Bear and Mongoose by my side (I didn't quite manage the merging), we quickly made our way through time and space, aided by the fast pace of the drum. We touched down at the California Avenue train station in Palo Alto. There I saw a few souls milling about. But there was one in particular sitting on the bench in the train station shelter with his head in his hands.

"Don?" I said as I stood before him. He looked up and seemed to recognize me. I introduced myself then asked if he would walk with me. He stood up and we walked down the tracks together.

"Are you happy here?" I asked.
"No," he said. He seemed troubled, confused that he was still there.
"Would you like me to take you where you can be happy?" I asked
"Yes," he said and so the four of us walked off the tracks, across the parking lot and through the underpass to the park across the street. I kept talking to him as we walked.

I looked for a tall tree, then remembered to ask if he wanted to go up or down. He said up. He didn't seem like the lower world type, I thought. I helped him to climb on Bear's back and told him to hang on. Then the four of us climbed up to the first level. I explained to him that this was the platform for souls to find their destination. He already knew where he wanted to go. He wanted to go to the third level to the Theatre of Existential Narrative. Well that figures, I thought and led the way up.

We entered that white room and a man came towards us. They knew each other and seemed to be good friends. They hugged and Don was sobbing as the man talked to him. My animals and I sat on a ledge against the back wall of the theatre and watched. The thought entered my head that this was an old friend from a men's group Don had belonged to. I didn't know him well enough to know if he had ever belonged to one or not; the scene was unfolding of its own accord.

Don's friend asked him what he'd like to do. As he said this, a large unplanted field appeared under their feet stretching out the back wall to a middle distance. Don said he wanted to double dig the entire field. We all knew what back breaking labor that was because Don worked at Common Ground, the non-profit where we had all learned the art of double digging. But we could see that he really needed to do this work. Several more men were now in the room and they spread through the field to help him. After he had been digging for a while, his friend asked him, "Would you like to go to this place Amanda told us about?" This surprised me somewhat, especially because I knew he was talking about the weather lab which was a vision of my own personal afterlife, not the one we were in. Still none of us seemed to want Don to spend eternity double digging the field of the Theatre of Existential Narrative. He was doing it more as a penance without joy, just determination. He agreed to follow me, but only after he finished digging the field.

When it was done with everyone's help, he followed me to the level above, the Fifth level of the mandala work. It was here that the weather lab seemed to fit in and I told him about the work to help mitigate climate chaos and improve crop growing on earth. He didn't believe me at first, but he took a look around and asked people to show him how it worked. A lab assistant explained that every garden on earth began here as a vision. Then took him to look at the original vision that started Common Ground. That was good enough for Don, so he agreed to stay. My job was done. As I walked away, I turned to look back at him.

"Thank-you," he said. He was smiling with tears in his eyes; he seemed genuinely happy and grateful. He waved goodbye just as I heard the call back of the drum.

In the retelling of this journey my teacher confirmed that if the subject recognized me then it was indeed the person I sought, but it was not necessary to manage his destiny entirely. I only needed to take him to where he could be happy. I assured her that it had not been my doing what took place, that it seemed self guided. If there was any flourish of my own making it was in that last look back. That thank-you from Don, as well as his confirmation of the weather lab as real. All that was, perhaps, a gift for me. Still I would now remember Don being in a place where he could be happy doing the work of the planet.

It might well be my work, too, one day.

Betrayed In San Bernardino

Here be the sorry saga of how a relationship across class lines ended in eviction. What redemption there was and what future hope for my landlording venture.

Betrayal

I pulled up to our San Bernardino rental property an hour ahead of the sheriff and prepared myself for the eviction of my contractor, Mike, from the house he had put so much of his talent into restoring, making improvements as if it were his own. I had sorely wanted to avoid this eviction scene, the tawdry humility of it. I had told him so too, but he had chosen to draw it out to the bitter end, long overstaying his promise to be out after Thanksgiving. He had nothing left to lose. His life shattered by the betrayal of his wife. His son plucked from his life (the son of the kidney transplant story that had so long been the focus of everyone's concerns).

"Hi Mike," I called out to him when I saw him coming out of the house. He had a large old truck I hadn't seen before, backed up to the porch and a section of the railing had been removed to make it easier for him to pull things out of the front door into the truck bed. He smiled his easy smile and came down the stairs towards me rolling his eyes as if to bear up against all that the universe had poured on his head.

"So you've had quite a time of it," I say to him playing into his victim role, hoping to have his cooperation by being friendly even though he had refused to return my e-mails or phone calls in the last week, having not moved out as promised. It had made me uneasy about what I might find at the house, so I was happy enough to ease back into our old camaraderie. He introduced me to his assistant Frank, a pockmarked Hispanic man who seemed eager to please. Mike was moving next door to the shabbiest house on the block. He had asked us, early last year, if we wanted to buy it for $40,000 presumably so he could have steady work fixing it up. It had been on the market nearly a year; the owners needing to follow a job. A sale was pending; the across-the-street neighbor had bought it for $55,000. Their son had moved into it. Mike had probably traded his skills for a room. He was storing all of his tools in their garage.

I hadn't wanted it to end this way. Nor had he.

"I wish I'd known," he said when we got to talking about Jennifer and the latest news on her criminal activity. The rent owed added up to nearly $3,000 when we started proceedings and was now over $5,000. Catherine had called him twice since we'd given them notice and I left him a message too, but he didn't call back. He said Jennifer had stolen his phone, deleted all his messages. Mike had entrusted all administrative details to Jennifer. She was the one who kept us apprised of things at the property, sent us pictures of repairs, sent the rent money. When Jennifer first decided to grift us she just asked us to forgive them not being able to pay the full rent, that they were short that month. The language of her e-mails included both of them and were filled with emotional promises about how they would pay us as soon as they could. Then she wrote me that her mother was ill from a bad reaction to a drug for her kidneys and she had to go to Oregon to take care of her.

"This woman knows way too much about kidneys," I thought, but didn't say anything, figuring Mike knew about this excuse and was hiding his inability to find work behind it.

In June Mike got a big disability check and they were paid up again so all seemed well. The next month the new tenants in the back house entrusted Mike with their rent in cash and asked him to buy a money order and send it to us because they were afraid they would be late. Jennifer wrote to tell me about the cash being given to Mike. I received an envelope, but no check. I called Jennifer to ask if she had left the money order on her desk somewhere. She swore she had enclosed it. She also wanted to tell me that their truck was broken into the other night, but oddly enough nothing was stolen. As I talked to her I discovered a tiny hole in the lower right hand corner of the envelope and a crease as if someone had extracted the money order through that hole.

"It's been stolen", I told her and she voiced surprise. I asked if she could find the receipt and get a replacement. She said Mike had the receipt in the truck, then reported back that it was nowhere to be found.

"It must have been stolen from the truck," Jennifer reasoned. By this time the whole story was so fishy even I couldn't believe it. I called up Mike and asked what he thought. He said he would shoot the son of a bitch who stole it.

"But doesn't it seem suspicious?" I asked. He changed the subject, started talking about alien sightings. I asked why he hadn't answered his phone and he told me that he had forgotten to pay it to operate. This sounded plain irresponsible for a father with a son of precarious medical stability. So, I thought, he was in on it too. Eliseo, in the back house, had lost his phone altogether so couldn't be reached for questioning. We were stymied. A thief would not bother with a receipt nor would one bother to take the trouble to pull a money order from a hole in an envelope when it would be easier to take the whole thing. Obviously someone wanted me to know the check had been mailed and a replacement could not be had. Then Jennifer sent their money order it was short $50. This made it the same rent Eliseo would have paid, but again we didn't ad it up. Catherine was mad that they had arbitrarily set the rent lower at their whim.

In September, Jennifer wrote again. "I don't know if Mike told you, but my mother died and I had to use the rent money to fly to Oregon," she wrote. I figured mother died years ago and was being made freshly dead for this new excuse, but we didn't think a person would lie about such a thing. In October, she wrote to say she was still in Oregon waiting for money to bring her back and then they would find a way to pay us all the money owed or find a less expensive place to live. This was Catherine's cue to write them and ask them to leave by November 1st. We heard nothing from them after that and I realized we had lost control of the situation. I was sure they were blowing us off and would stay as long as they wanted rent free. We would have to actually evict them. I got a referral from my friend in LA who had sold us the house.

The law office referred cranked out evictions like hamburgers. For $650, I hired this MacEvict house and on Halloween our three day quit or pay notice and our 60 day notice was served. (Because they had lived there longer than two years it had to be 60 days, not 30.) The lawyer speculated that they would be long gone before then. I still couldn't believe that Mike would so easily give up the house he had lavished so much time customizing to fit all his needs. Two weeks later we both got frantic messages from Mike.

"I know I'm behind on the rent, but I'll make it up to you. Jennifer stole all my money," he said pitifully. Then another message to say that she had been arrested near the border of Oregon. I felt a sense of relief that it wasn't him; that he was still the man I thought he was, but Catherine didn't want us to call him back and get roped into his drama. She had liked Mike too and now felt betrayed.

He called again. This time I answered. He talked to me in his most calm professional voice, telling me he could understand how it must look especially given how Tally had disappeared on us with two months' rent due just last May. Told me he was not the kind of guy who didn't pay his bills. That he was nothing without his reputation and would pay back every cent he owed. I wanted to believe him, wanted to give him back his home, help him find his kid, but Catherine didn't trust him; why hadn't he called as soon as Jennifer left given that November's rent was due?

Jennifer was doing time, had several cases of elder abuse against her from her job as a caretaker in the homes of ill patients, Mike told me. A patient had been screaming for her and a neighbor had come to see what was wrong; Jennifer was not on the premises. She had stolen from others, whatever she could lay her hands on. I tried to reconcile my acquaintance of her with this criminal mind. I remembered the first time I met her. I was curious to see what kind of woman Mike was hitched to. When I walked up to see her face I was almost sorry I had been curious. She was not just plain, she was ugly in a way that made me feel sorry for her, but repulsed me at the same time. I had gone out of my way to treat her as a peer, ate dinner with her, even talked about how important it was to gain the trust of my clients. I had assumed she shared my assumption that one had to actually be trustworthy.

When I saw her last summer she had told me that she couldn't work overnight anymore because Mike couldn't seem to get their son to school on time. It was an issue, she said. But was that enough to leave him or was she just sticking around to embezzle his disability money? When our eviction notice was served she must have realized the game was up. Mike said he never saw the eviction notice.

Jennifer's sentence for her elder abuse was all of three months, only the jails were so overcrowded she got off on a work permit and only had to serve her time on the weekends. Later she was arrested for a hit and run which she tried to blame on Mike, but he had already reported that she had taken the car so that wouldn't wash. There was no end to her badness. Nor was her mother dead, but mother was a shady character too, Mike said. The whole family was like that. I asked him what she did with all the money she stole. He said he had no idea. Later he revealed to me that she had a conviction for possession of cocaine on her record which should affect the custody case. He had had his own run-ins with the law he admitted, but he'd never been convicted of anything. This did not exactly reassure me.

On the morning of the eviction he was telling me how he got her car back. The sheriff drove up, saw us talking. A young man in a sharply pressed uniform, he asked me if I was Jennifer. I said I was the homeowner. Trying to be friendly he made an attempt to pronounce my name. Then he walked through the mostly empty house, picked up the vacuum cleaner and put it outside as if to fulfill his role. I asked him how many evictions he did.

"Twenty-five a day, 100 a week," he said. He made it seem routine.

This one too was routine so he had me sign off on it. Then he stood there shooting the breeze with Mike, ignoring me. Mike showed him his truck, put up the hood and told how he had fixed it after it had been parked for years in someone's yard. Mike appeared to be writing his number down for the Sheriff in case he too needed cars fixing. He was networking at his own eviction.

Redemption

When the sheriff left, the plumbing company showed up; the foreman striding in with a clipboard, a blue tooth headset in his ear. Mike had told the truth about the leak he had written me about in his final e-mail. There was a lake under the house that required another company to come out and pump out 326 gallons of water before the plumbers could begin their work. The galvanized piping was rotting and the foreman recommended re-plumbing the entire house with copper and PEX. I saw the wisdom of it, though I was pained by the sticker shock—$6,400 not including the $1,800 for the water pumping. The foreman shut off the water, not realizing the back house was shut off too. Said he would be back in two days after the ground had dried up a bit. Then the locksmith showed up to rekey the 15 locks on both houses since Mike had keys to the back house as well and we didn't want to worry about Jennifer or him trying anything. It would take all day to do both. I offered the locksmith a bagel; he smiled and explained that he was on a special diet for medical reasons, told me about a holistic doctor he was seeing. How his cancer went into recession because of this diet. He looked more computer tech than working class. The law firm had sent him. He also served as the eyewitness reporting on the condition of the property.

I went to check on our tenants in the back house at the end of the day. They asked when the water was going to be turned on. I called the foreman; he said the water couldn't be turned on until the end of Thursday. This was disastrous. I couldn't leave my tenants without water for three days. I went next door to find Mike sorting his things in the garage.

"We have a situation here," I told him. He reached for his wrench came over to turn the proper shut off valves to the front house, then turned the main on. We went together to tell Eliseo his water was back on. I owed Mike now and he knew it. I drove to my room at the Super 8 motel. No camping on the property this time round.

The next morning as I drove in from the commercial, spruced up end of town, I called out to the powers for help, any powers out there. Asked for the day to go well, named all the details I had in mind, listing them out loud. I worked alone in the front house spackling and cleaning. Mike had promised to come over and help. At eleven I went next door and rang the doorbell. He answered, said he'd had a late night, would be right over. An hour later he makes it over and asks me what I'd like him to do.

"I'm worried about the pool," I tell him. It was a large inflatable variety with a pump set-up on cinder blocks. It was deflated and looked terrible covered with mud and algae. I asked him to remove it and fill in the hole. He takes the pool away. But shortly after digging the hole back in on itself, he quit. Said later that he didn't feel good, but he revived enough to take another truck load of his tools out of the garage that night. Catherine was mad that his stuff wasn't off the property yet. Mad that I was still talking to him. Wanted to fly down and throw his stuff on the street. I still felt I needed him. There were too many things I wasn't sure how to fix. One of the bedroom doors was missing a doorknob from an unfinished repair on the door, the kitchen counter was missing a piece of molding and the railing on the porch hadn't been put back. Mike brought me the doorknob.

In the afternoon a van drove by, slowed to look at my 'for rent' sign and made a U turn. The passenger asked what the rent was.

"$975" I told them. "And a $500 deposit."

"That's not bad at all," she said and asked if they could see the house. A very fat Hispanic woman who had been driving, climbed out, followed by a moderately fat one, a skinny young white guy and a child. I showed them in. The first woman introduced her daughter whom I realized was not fat at all but was pregnant. The mother said she had five kids all told. The young man said he was the boyfriend.

"We get social security," the daughter told me.

"So do I" said the boyfriend. "I'm deaf in one ear," he added by way of explanation and turned back his ear to show me a scar.

"How are seven people going to fit in a two bedroom house," I asked them.

"Oh this is much bigger than the apartment we live in now", said the daughter. "We have bunk beds", they explained. I was feeling out of my depth and was wishing someone would tell me, right then, that I couldn't possibly rent to seven people. I gave them an application so as not to appear to be discriminating. Then my mother calls and they drive away while I'm still on the phone.

The plumbers came back the next day. The foreman looked serious; he hadn't counted on the line running all the way to the back house. It was going to cost more to replace that line too, $1700 more, might take two days longer too. I groaned inwardly and approved it. If they didn't complete the line the old pipe would clog up the new. Our loan on the property would now top $200,000. We were in for the long haul; a very long haul of renting. Luckily help was arriving.

Veronica, our real estate agent, a young, ambitious Hispanic woman had agreed to be our eyes on the ground for an hourly fee. She pulled up in her black Mercedes and jumped out in a black Nike warm up suit, a white Nike cap over her long black hair. She gave me a hug. I gave her the tour, introduced her to Blanca in the back house. She admired all the work that had been done since she sold us the property. She was studying Suzie Orman's online class and was practicing her financial analysis, asking how much we put into repairs after the $100,000 we paid originally.

By a stroke of good timing, she was also able to meet a couple who wanted to rent the house. They had come by the day before and had returned, having seen the condition of other offerings and apartments with no yard, no patio for their cat. They were moving from San Diego to be closer to family. I liked this pair; I could see they were normal in the middle class sense, though his teeth were sorely in need of dentistry. They were struggling some to rebuild a life. Everybody who comes to San Bernardino is struggling some. It is the end of the line. They didn't have jobs, they had SSI benefits and an army stipend. But she was a fighter—a feisty bantam fighter—determined to put her life back together after a breakdown. He was going to go to school on army money. Veronica asked if they would send copies of their bank statements and documents to prove they were getting these benefits. She was a lesson to me on tracking accountability. They actually had bank accounts. And decent credit which was even more rare. I promised to peruse their application over the weekend.

When they left I told Veronica about Mike, how he still had stuff to move. How he was living next door. She was incredulous that people were taking him in, that he would actually find housing after an eviction.

"He's friends with everybody," I said. Mike was a living example of community building, of surviving on connections and I admired that. "He's charming," I added, "even I fell for it. He fixes things; he can bring cars back from the dead," I added. This idea of trading skills for favors was a novel concept to her.

"He a white guy?" she asked.

"Yes," I said appreciating her having made this distinction. In this diverse neighborhood a white guy was the universal glue. His approval and friendship were valuable to everyone of minority status. Veronica nodded. Being a white guy also meant getting away with more.

While we stood there watching the plumbing job in full swing, a truck from the electric company drove up. I realized he was there to turn off the electricity. I told him I was the homeowner and he said he would leave it on if I would call up the electric company that day. He showed me the name on the current bill. It was Mike's last name, but with a different first name. He must have been dodging old bills. The man assured me I would not have to pay his delinquent bill.

Showdown

After Veronica left, I went to tell Mike he was missing out on the fun. He was still in his boxers looking confused when I knocked on his door. I wanted him to put back the railing and finish smoothing out the dirt after the pool clean-up, but he looked quite pale and was clearly out of commission. He went off to the doctor, came back later and told me he might have an ulcer.

"Well that wouldn't be surprising", I said. He was often conveniently ill when he didn't want to face something. The final day of my visit, the day I had to have everything of his off the property as I promised Catherine, I saw him take off in the morning with Frank and I knew they had found work and I would get no more help from him. I called him up reminding him that he still had stuff to move and I was leaving at five. At four-thirty he dropped Frank off. Frank came over and politely asked me what I wanted him to move. I pointed out everything and he set to work while I went to the hardware store for bolts to put back the railing on the front porch because the plumbers had cleaned up everything when they were done and thrown them out.

"Those bastards," said Mike when I called to tell him, but he made no offer to come back and fix it. I was getting tired of these not quite finished jobs he had left me and the plumber leaving me holes in the wall to cover. But I was proud of being able to do it myself. When I came to the final sweep out I saw there was still a stack of particle boards and closet pieces and a kitchen garbage can full of trash left from Mike's stuff.

I went next door and knocked. Frank answered the door looking nervously at me.

"Can you move the rest of the stuff?" I asked him. He said he'd do it later. I explained that I had to have it finished before I left.

"I'm busy right now. I can't do it. I'm waiting for Mike," he said. I didn't like the way he was blowing me off like that and his tone of voice was condescending. I gave him another half an hour then called Mike to complain. Mike didn't answer. He was blowing me off. Had no reason to make good on his lip service to make it all up to me. It was my turn to show my irritation at his having dragged things out, left me to clean up after him.

I did in fifteen minutes what Frank was too busy to do. I'm surprised he didn't come out, given the racket I was making tossing the garbage can into their yard and the particle board and closet pieces on top of it. The final touch was a bag of soccer balls. I tossed each one over the fence at Jennifer's car parked in the front yard next door. I threw a few into the engine compartment just to unnerve Frank. He had the hood propped open to charge up the battery. There was a stick almost thick enough to be a log in the pile of leftovers and I tossed that gently onto the engine. Frank came out ten minutes when I was just about to load finish up. He threw the soccer balls back into our yard trying to hit my car which was in the driveway just before the porch steps where I was standing. A ball hit the house with such force I knew I was in for it.

"Why did you do this?" he asked.

"Because you're so lame," I said.

He threw more balls at the car. I felt strangely calm. My black belt training had accustomed me to physical attacks, allowing me to think clearly. He wasn't aiming for me. He was completely focused on the car. I heard him mumble something.

"What" I said.

"You're so fucking stupid," he shouted.

"No you are," I said calmly, "I'm just giving you the same back."

He bent over to pick something up. And I heard a thwack as that something hit the side of my car. It was the log. Then silence. We both realized he'd gone too far. I saw myself standing there alone after dark, having deteriorated to the level of my slum lord neighborhood. Things could get unpredictable.

"Okay," I told him, taking out my phone, "I'm going to have to call the police." But I was not wearing my glasses so had to squint a bit at my phone as I pressed 911.

"Go ahead", he said and went inside. I was rid of him this stand-in of Mike's lame performance. No one had come out to see what the ruckus was about. I stood listening to the quiet and closed my phone, the call uncompleted.

I locked up the house, loaded my cleaning supplies and step ladder, drove off the property, got out a final time, listened for any trouble and closed the gate. I felt in control again. I had reclaimed my property and had new tenants waiting. Mike might take it out on the house given my losing it with his last bit of crap, but something in me had shifted. No one was going to take advantage of me quite so easily again. I had faced my fear—an eviction—and acquired a new authority. I was no longer operating on a hope and a prayer. Things would be businesslike now and probably not nearly as entertaining, but that was fine with me.

Happy Paradigm Shift

In which I enter the auspicious year of 2012 through various avenues of my subconscious from shopping cart to under the house storage to apocalyptic revelations.

Let There Be Little Lights

At breakfast I rarely pass up looking at the newspaper shopping ads to see what trendy new stuff people are tempted to buy that I might later have to persuade them to give away. Plus I like camping items, my category of shopping vice. Thus I found myself perusing the doorbuster ads for Black Friday; the deals were particularly vehement. Possibly the impact of Buy Nothing Day, combined as it was with the Occupy movement, had spooked the retail sector. (Buy Nothing Day is timed to coincide with Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, said to put the retail sector into the black as we go into the Christmas shopping season. This is partly because it is a holiday falling as it does on the day after Thanksgiving and family members communicate what they might want for Christmas by going to the mall together.) In recent years the retail sector has fought back such anti-consumerist notions with more and more breathtaking deals on their most popular items guaranteed to lure shoppers into the mall on the day and make the evening news with some mob incidence of bad behavior. 

I eyeballed the Home Depot ad. The store is so close to my house it has become a part of my route. My eye was caught by a modest offering of LED Christmas lights priced at $2.95, a quarter of what they would normally go for. Festooning the outside of the house with strings of light to create a winter wonderland (and add to the utility bill by hundreds of dollars) was a feat we enjoyed vicariously courtesy of our neighbor across the street. But we did have a string of lights outlining the perimeter of a room inside the house. They created a lovely festive atmosphere for parties and were bright enough that we didn't need any other lighting for our dining purposes. LED lights required so little electricity that it occurred to me that I could power the entire room with a car battery that could then be recharged with a solar panel. I had seen a truck battery put to domestic use powering a TV at a cafe in the outbacks of Brazil. When I asked how the battery was recharged I learned that it was put back into a truck every so often. These simple technological work arounds devised by the developing world have always had enormous appeal to me because they sip, from the first world, cogent bits of technology while preserving the magnificence of the surrounding landscape and the timeless lifestyle. Such timelessness was perhaps a fantasy associated in my memory with exotic travel, but I still longed for it.

In order to get this string of lights hooked up to a car battery I would need an inverter to convert the 110 voltage and accommodate the conventional two prong plug. Traveling consultants have been using such inverters for years to power laptops from their cigarette lighter outlet while working in their car. It so happened that Pep Boys, the automotive big box store next door to Home Depot, was offering doorbuster sales of inverters. And jumpstarters. A jumpstarter is simply a mini car battery inside a portable box. It is usually used to jumpstart a dead car, but also comes with a cigarette lighter outlet. Now I was really excited.

In complete violation of my long time covenant with Buy Nothing Day, I found myself at the above big box stores at 7:30 a.m. filling a shopping cart. My guilt was somewhat mollified by another idea. I could now take this show on the road. Because all of the components for my third world workaround were available at such chain stores it could be easily replicated by others who were more mainstream than me and not quite so geeky. And by combining the festive notion of Christmas lights with the back up components normally associated with an emergency I could introduce a new paradigm. A power outage was no longer about fumbling with a flashlight waiting for a utility company to restore power; it was a festive holiday liberating the house from an unreliable centralized system. It was this kind of paradigm shift that really excited me.

The solar panel is a little pricey at  close to $90, but the point was anybody could create a mini off grid system with these off the shelf components. My solar panel was also bought, several summers ago, from an auto supply store; Frye's has them too. It comes with all the bits to connect it to a battery. No additional wiring is needed. It would recharge the jumpstarter battery in a day. Thus the whole system was self-supporting. I was able to keep my kitchen lit with a string of 200 LED lights for 3 1/2 hours before the battery needed recharging. (The lights drew 7 watts from the 8 amp hour battery.)

I took my road show to my neighborhood networking meeting and in five minutes persuaded six women of the beauty of this system. Being organizers they were already well schooled in the virtues of emergency preparation and as traveling consultants were familiar with inverters and car chargers for their mobile devices. My colleagues immediately recognized the usefulness of the jumpstarter. But I was also gratified that they made the connection with how easy it was to create and use an off grid system. 

Of course there is a bit more to a kitchen than just lights. I had my propane camp stove, barbecue and solar oven, but the achilles heel was the fridge. This led to a little side trip underground.

Musings From The Man-da Cave

I was feeling so geeky with my obsession with LED lights, that when I came across an interior design book at the library about Man Caves I realized that a piece of me had been waiting to be identified and named. I laughed with recognition at sentiments expressed in the introduction. Wives taking over the house and rendering husbands uncomfortable in their own home. College trophies, sports paraphernalia, outdoor signs, Christmas lights and beer bottle collections exiled to the basement or garage. 

I wanted a man cave of my own or perhaps more to the point, a Man-da Cave.

The real stories behind these thematically male spaces revealed a devotion to civility and a responsibility to wives and family that was quite endearing. The man of such integrity needs a man cave to get away from his responsibilities. I recognized this to be exactly why I cultivated my obsessions with expedition camping gear, alternative vehicles, off grid systems and tiny houses. These obsessions gave me a place to go to get away from an increasingly complex world. 

I did in fact already have such a space. One that wasn't considered an actual part of the house. It was already cave like. You had to be stooped over to walk around in it like cro magnon man or like the office space between floors in the movie Being John Malcovich. It was the space under the house, which being on the side of a hill, afforded more height in parts of it than the usual crawl space. 

I started taking it over when I moved in 17 years ago, because with four adults in residence at the time, we were very short on storage space. The man of the house had already stashed stuff on the shelves that had been affixed to the supporting pillars of the house. So I put in more shelves, lots more, for my boxes of love letters, and newspaper clippings from when I had my ten minutes of fame riding my unicycle to work. And collection of early hand drawn Banana Republic catalogs from when they were cool and had an old jeep in the store and actually sold vintage stuff. And stamp albums, Pride day button collection, vacation slides, a manual Olivetti typewriter, karate trophy, rolled up posters, a hood ornament I meant to make into a lamp, art projects and materials for art projects.

The floor, like most crawl spaces, was originally bare earth and got quite damp in the winter and muddy in parts. In fact I kept my worm bin down there and the worms were so happy they reproduced in amazing quantities and looked like flowing lava when I piled them up to collect the vermicompost. But I decided that the damp made the house cold, so I painstakingly leveled the dirt, laid sand over the damp part and covered it with very wide thick sheets of plastic. To protect the plastic, I lay tarpaper over it. I cut both right up to the footing for the posts using a stencil so there would be no gaps. When we got new vinyl flooring in the kitchen, I put the leftovers over the tarpaper. The white vinyl transformed the space into an actual room. Unfortunately the worms died from dehydration since I didn't realize the climate had changed so radically and didn't water their bedding enough. After that I didn't come down so often since there were no living beings to bring food to and take care of. Then it just became a storage space.

After reading the man cave book I went down to the space. I unfolded a camp chair to sit in because, in the bent over position needed to navigate this catacomb, frequent rest was warranted. I took a picture of myself in the chair sitting next to shelves of old paint and the chainsaw resting on a milk crate. Posted to flickr with the above description, it soon became my most popular shot of the quarter. Apparently others found the idea of a woman creating a man cave just as endearing.

I didn't put up any Christmas lights but I did cover the pink insulation overhead with flattened cardboard from empty boxes of Cheerios, stapled to the joists; (a client liked to save the boxes for me to recycle). It gave the place a cheery op art feel. I found pictures of Queen Elizabeth the First from a presentation I had given at a class on cultivating peace and put one up on the hatch that was the entrance to the cave. The space was already well lit with bare bulbs in old lamps. 

At Home Depot, looking at lights again, I discovered LED light bulbs. I brought one home to test in the Man-da cave. The new technology was a fine improvement over compact fluorescents. Better color, more solidly built, lasts 23 years and leaves no hazardous waste to dispose of. Also dimmable and uses less energy. I gave one to a client as a gift and she was enthralled by it.

Into my freshly swept out and spruced up Man-da Cave, I surreptitiously dragged in my latest object of interest—a diminutive chest freezer. I got it off Craigslist for $50. I wanted to see if I could make it into a low energy fridge like the guy in Australia living on the side of a mountain powered by a few solar panels. Such a workaround wouldn't suck up more power than a 100 watt bulb, he promised in his online report. You do it by plugging the freezer into an external thermometer that keeps it from turning on so much thus raising the temperature to fridge like conditions and cutting the energy used. Beer makers had discovered the same thing since chest freezers were the ideal size and shape for a beer keg. Beer making was a very man cave thing to do. This kept me from feeling too much like a survivalist nut job outfitting my bunker. 

I sat in my camp chair admiring the still unplugged freezer. Maybe next month I would buy the $60 thermometer thingie. It was time to join the family above for the holidays. (Family having now comfortably integrated Catherine's middle brother Steven as a member of the household. This would be our second Christmas together.)

Discovering Pluto

On Christmas day, during a rare period of blissful inactivity, I lay on the couch reading a book, by an astrologer, that I had requested as a gift. I discovered that my astrological chart revealed a voracious and irrational interest in acquiring knowledge. This was driven by subconscious forces on account of Pluto being so dominant in the 8th house of my chart. I was struck by this explanation. I had believed my pursuit of information was driven by feelings of inadequacy, but this explained why I never got around to actually becoming an overwhelming success. Success apparently wasn't my goal. In fact there was no actual point to my reading so much at all. I was just addicted to those ah ha moments of understanding. What a revelation. 

The author, Jessica Murray a San Francisco based astrologist, advised the mature reader to embrace the dark obsessive side of Pluto's influence, in order to transcend it and transform it. Having recently brought to light the mementos of my past, hidden in the subconscious underground of the house, I figured that, metaphorically speaking, I was getting a good start. Especially since I was augmenting the space with innovative attempts to live lightly on the planet.

The actual point of her self-published book Soul-Sick Nation: An Astrologer's View of America, was to invite readers to help transform the subconscious dark side of America's obsession with power in order to save this materialistic, over-militarized and self centered nation from destroying the planet. Her analysis of the political landscape of said nation was so right on that I fully accepted her advice and found her astrological analysis of recent U.S. history fascinating. The book had been written in 2006, but it was absolutely fitting for the portentous upcoming year of 2012. 

The End Of The World

On New Year's Eve Catherine, Steven and I watched the hollywood disaster movie 2012, just for kicks, and found it rather exhilarating to see the entire planet break up into disaster movie compendium of earthquake, flood, hurricane and what all, as the self appointed survivors (an obscure American writer and a Russian millionaire and their respective families, plus token minorities) competed with each other to board secret government arks built to weather the flood Noah style. 

The next day as the new year pealed out on a clear sunny day, it did feel different. 2012 was not so much pregnant with promise which implies certainty, but strangely giddy with the uncertainty of it; the hope and expectation that dramatic change is afoot. After all we have already ended 2011 with Occupy and the clamor for change in the United States which had for so long preferred business as usual. While on the other side of the world a mega flood had threatened my relatives in Bangkok in a year notable for excessive catastrophic climate events and earthquakes. The new year seemed positively brimming with end of the world material. 

Of course the world is not ending on the winter solstice of this year, per the predictions of the Mayan calendar (misinterpreted by an apocalypse obsessed culture), any more than Santa Claus is expected down the chimney every Christmas. But that doesn't mean we're ready to give up Santa Claus. An opportunity for cataclysmic change, especially within our collective psyche, is too good to pass up. The anticipation of it is potent with power as we climb on board the appointed year. For apocalypse or not I still believed in the potential for events of cultural consciousness to shift quite suddenly just as all those ah ha moments had flooded my mind with new, liberating, understanding. The stars were aligned for it.

Meanwhile on the other side of the earth the Buddhist calendar brings us the year 2555. This, to a Thai, must seem to be mocking them with laughter because 555 is Thai internet slang for LOL. When you say the number 5 repeatedly in Thai it sounds as if you are laughing cartoon style—ha, ha, ha.  Given all that my Thai contacts have put up with, of late, with the flood and crazy making incompetent politics, there hasn't been a lot to laugh about save for the cartoons and photos of escaped crocodiles my contacts posted of their shared dilemma. To laugh, I realized when I put the year 2555 together with 2012, was an appropriate response given the irony of governments attempting to dominate nature by investing so heavily in manmade systems only to smother the natural systems that ultimately supported life. (The Thai flood was not only caused by climate change, but made worse by deforestation and the paving over of swamp land, with industrial parks, that would have absorbed much of the water as it flowed to the sea; so much like Katrina.) Laughing was a response that affirmed my non-complicity with the craziness of it.

The world as we know it—especially the world as Americans know it and that everyone else is trying to copy—should come to an end. And if we can't wrestle our deluded leaders into addressing the situation at hand, we will just have to laugh at the absurdity of it and do what we can to wrestle free and find sanity.